Scene From An Alt Dimension
by DemonologistInDenim
Summary: The rift closed, and if it hadn't already, all Hell would've break loose. Missing scenes Season 13 that evolved into a canon-divergent Season 13. Crowley Lives! In Progress.
1. Chapter 1: Hello From the Other Side

Scene from An Alt!Dimension

* * *

Summary: The rift closed, and if it hadn't already, all Hell would've break loose. Missing scene from the first episode of Season 13.

* * *

The rift closed, and if it hadn't already, all Hell would've broken loose.

There was no mistaking the desperation in Lucifer's roar of denial, this dimension's dust-choked air on the verge of bursting into flames with the intensity of his fury. From the sound of it, the itinerate archangel's smugness and self-satisfaction had been thoroughly trounced, as had the threat he posed to that other reality, and to two flannelled hunters, surely now safely on the other side of the rift.

It was almost worth the searing, indescribable pain Crowley was in, the absolute indignity of laying there, half-comatose, with his face in the dirt.

Even if he could have fought against the weight of death cementing his entire being to the earth, the bright scorch of spectral rendering inside him, something withering into thin wisps of smoke before fading into the ether, there would have been nothing to see upon forcing open his eyes. His crumpled meatsuit faced away from the non-existent portal home and the raging archangel whose distress brought Crowley so much strained pleasure.

It was enough to know that as intense as his own suffering was, angel blade thrust through his corporal form into writhing demonic essence, this was the end. For Lucifer, trapped in this washed out dystopia, it was surely only the beginning.

Even when I lose, he thought bitterly, I win. Huzzah for me.

At least the boys were safe. They may not have parted on the best of terms. But at least he'd done right by them, and himself, in the end. Crowley took comfort in that, and was grateful this was the grand finale.

It could only have gotten worse. Never better.

Then something solid connected with his fallen form, and Mary Winchester landed on her rump in front of him. He knew it was her by the soft huff Mary made as she tripped over him and slammed into the dirt. Ever the hunter, some still conscious part of his mind thought. Woman topples over a body while backing away from danger, and barely makes a sound. Those loud, lumbering sons of hers still had a lot to learn.

What the bloody hell was she _doing_ here?

With more effort than it had required to take the throne after the aborted apocalypse, Crowley forced the tectonic plates that were his meatsuit's eyelids open. He was acutely aware now of the rampage happening somewhere behind him, the earth breaking apart and, yes, the very air in flames as Lucifer vented his futile wrath in an effort to reopen the rift. More bursts of red lightening singed the low hanging clouds above, and his body's skin felt braised and raw at the same time. Crowley smelled fresh blood, and for some inexplicable reason, that terrified him.

Beside him, Mary began to shuffle backwards, crab-like, no doubt eager to put as much distance between herself and Lucifer before attempting to make a run for it. She kicked him the process, and Crowley moaned into the dirt.

The hunter froze.

"Crowley?"

He groaned in response, attempting to voice both confusion and inquiry. What was she doing here, and equally as important, how was he still _alive_? He had felt the rush and explosion of light within himself that he had seen in the face of countless other demons – his essence, burning out. And yet, moment by moment, he was increasingly awareness of surroundings and self.

Hands griped the shoulders of his jacket and pulled, lifting Crowley into an upright position.

"Get up. We've got to move."

Mary's nearly inaudible urging fumbled at the cloudiness enshrouding Crowley's thoughts. He found himself forcing his feet underneath him, half-lurching, half-dragged away from the celestial storm of rage.

They stumbled, a precariously balanced pair struggling through a landscape of interminable agony and disorientation, terror flogging their spines. Any moment, and Lucifer would surely be upon them. Crowley tried to carry his own weight, tried to compartmentalize his physical pain. But every step was torment, and the smell of blood was growing stronger.

When Mary at last slung him down behind a boulder, Crowley was uncertain if they had staggered and half-crawled their way out of the canyon in which the rift had opened, or merely limped a few meters beyond where he'd fallen.

Crouched in front of him, face running with sweat and clothes smeared with what Crowley could only hope was his blood alone, Mary didn't look like she could go much further. She intensely surveyed beyond him, back the way they had come, before turning her sharp eyes on him.

"What the hell do we do now?" she murmured, assumedly to herself.

Crowley licked his dirt-encrusted lips, coughed a little, which only made the searing pain in his gut burst into new realms of agony. He breathed from between his teeth before forcing out, "You tell me. I should be partaking in whatever passes for the demonic version of a choir of angels in some hellish _after_ -afterlife." Crowley sucked in another breath as the white-hot flash in his gut subsided. "It's just you? The boys made it through?"

"They did. And the rift closed."

Unexpected relief pulled him further into the earth, the solid support of their stone shelter a tangible comfort.

A hand tentatively pulled at the matted silk of his jacket, and Crowley opened eyes he was unaware of having closed to see Mary examining the angel blade protruding from his stomach.

He'd known it was there, of course. Seeing it was an entirely different matter.

Bile surged into the back of his mouth, and it was a concerted effort to swallow down the mad desire to thrash away. Self-preservation threatened to kick into overdrive, but Crowley forced himself to be still as Mary completed a cursory exam of the wound.

"Lucifer?"

"Self-inflicted, I'm afraid. Spell to close the rift required a life. Couldn't be one of the boys. That has a tendency to result in yet another world-ending scenario. So, I volunteered."

Letting his jacket fall, Mary leaned back and eyed the demon.

"Guess I was wrong about you."

Not exactly what he had been expecting. "Sometimes I surprise even myself."

His smile must have lacked its usual swagger. Mary's expression changed, from fearless warrior into something Crowley was unfamiliar with. He had seen her direct that same look at Sam and Dean, and occasionally Castiel. It verged on concern, and it made Crowley feel both infinitely better and decidedly panicked.

"If I yank it out, can you heal yourself?"

He had no idea, and Mary didn't wait to find out. She grasped the hilt of the blade and tore the angelic weapon from his side.

Crowley screamed.

For an eternity, indescribable pain defined his existence. There was no knowledge that he had endured and even enjoyed far greater suffering before this. There was no _him_ , no definable boundaries between self and torment, just waves that crashed and recoiled to crash again. When it at last receded, Crowley slumped, spent, against the rock.

Before him, Mary stood with her back turned, clasping the bloodied angel blade.

Lucifer towered over them.

Some instinctual part of Crowley gathered around himself powers that were no longer there, preparing to lash out at the leather-clad, bullet-riddled form that roiled with malevolence. Exhaustion and pain only heightened the urge to strike, and his intent was accompanied by the roar of his heartbeat in his ears. Sheer bloody terror screamed in every nerve of his body.

Ever the Winchester, Mary stood her ground.

"Stay away from us," she snarled, swinging the blade in a sharp, deft arch between them and the archangel.

Lucifer batted it away with barely any effort.

"Oh," he purred, reaching out and grabbing Mary by the wrist, dragging her towards him. "I think you and I are going to be staying very, very close." Lucifer spared a glance at Crowley, his eyes gleaming golden circles of flame.

The hunter fought, broke free. Lucifer snagged a handful of Mary's hair and twisted, yanking her back against him. He clasped a hand around her throat, and she went still.

"Now, now. That's enough of that. It's entirely understandably you're upset. Shhh, now, calm down." Mary closed her eyes tight as the archangel leaned into her hair, fingers tracing the line of her jaw. "That's a good girl."

Lucifer sighed, as though disappointed in himself.

"Apologies for my little temper tantrum back there. Safe to say, I was a little _upset_ ," he snarled, twisting Mary's hair tighter and extracting a stiff inhalation, "when a certain portal closed, _trapping_ us in here. And you'll notice," he drawled, "I say _us_ , because from here on out, we're a pair. You and me, Mary, we're in this together. We're going to get out of here, _together_. Or," Lucifer paused, pretending to think on it, " _I'm_ gonna get out of here, and _you're_ gonna be dead. Haven't decided yet; likely the latter."

"If you think I'm going to help you – "

"Oh, I do. See, I know Winchesters. I've been deep, _deep_ inside your boy, Sammy. And I know, there is no way in Hell, or any other interdimensional reality, that those two cry-baby mama's boys aren't going to find a way to reopen that rift and come barreling in here to rescue you."

"Sam and Dean aren't stupid," Mary gulped. She was rigid in Lucifer's embrace, but Crowley realized she was looking at him. Glancing down; meeting his eyes again. "They know the moment that portal closed, I was gone."

The angel blade. She was looking at the angel blade. It lay where Mary had dropped it, no more than a meter from Crowley.

"Well," Lucifer replied, "guess we'll just have to find out which of us is right."

Their eyes met again, and Mary moved. The tautness of her body snapped, propelling her not away from Lucifer, but towards him. She slammed the entirely of her weight into the archangel, sending them both reeling away into the dirt.

Crowley scrambled after the angel blade, shutting out the blinding agony and the terror. On his knees, a hand pressed to his side in a vain attempt to staunch the sticky, scarlet puddle soaking into the colorless dirt beneath him, Crowley grasped the hilt of the blade. Triumph and desperation steeled Crowley against the pain as he prepared to rise to his feet.

Then the back of his head slammed against the boulder, and a universe exploded before his eyes.

"Okay, now I'm really starting to get annoyed."

Blinking to clear away the stars, Crowley tried again to rise. He reached out, searching half-blind for the angel blade, for Mary, for some way out of this nightmare.

He couldn't let Lucifer take her. Maybe Crowley was beyond saving, maybe there was no going home for him, nothing to go home _to_ , no forgiveness or redemption or peaceful eternity of nothingness. But that wasn't the case for the Winchesters.

His vision cleared, to see the hunter bloodied and battered into the earth. She was conscious, her dark-rimmed eyes staring hazily at the demon. Her mouth moved, but Crowley couldn't make out the words.

"Mary," he managed, surprised by the anguish in his voice.

With one hand, Lucifer grabbed her by the arm, and hauled her to her feet.

"Oh, Crowley," he sighed dramatically. "You still don't disappoint. No matter how insignificant you become, you don't ever give up the delusion that you can make a difference. It would be endearing," Lucifer shrugged, "you know, if it wasn't futile and a pain in my ass."

"Go…go to Hell," Crowley bit out.

"Oh, I will. When I get out of here. And Heaven too. But you, you're not going anywhere." The archangel cocked his head, clearly enjoying the sight before him. "You know, this seems like a really fitting end for you, Crowley. You wanted to play the hero, and now you get to die like one. Bleeding out. No one to save you. Just like those Winchester brothers you love so much. A pathetic little human."

With Mary half-slumped against him, Lucifer turned and walked off. The dismal gray of the dystopian landscape swallowed their retreating forms as a pit opened up inside Crowley.

Human.

He was fucking _human_.

The angel blade. It had killed him alright, or at least, the part of him that had still been a demon. Leaving him with the weak, sentimental, _mortal_ humanity that had been restored by the cure all those years ago.

Crowley wanted to bellow with frustration, or maybe weep with relief. There wasn't time for either, however. The blood loss was beginning to nibble away at the edges of his consciousness. His thoughts wandered, from rescuing Mary, to stringing Lucifer up on the rack, to sitting around the table in the bunker. His mother sat, far away at one end, but he couldn't quite bring himself to begrudge her presence. Sam was shuffling through papers, research of some kind, no doubt. Cas was around somewhere, his solid, stodgy presence somehow comforting. And Dean. Dean was sitting down beside him, offering a beer, smiling.

Crowley lay in the dirt, watching the images form and fade before his eyes, thinking it all over. This was how he was going to die. Not conveniently saving the world and spitting in Lucifer's eye at the same time. Not doing the right thing. Not even at the end of the demon blade, the boys wavering between righteous indignation and uncertainty.

Crowley had known for some time now that Sam and Dean Winchester would eventually be the death of him. He hadn't imagined it would be like this.

The soft crunch of approaching footsteps broke into the molten luminosity of his receding thoughts. Weakly, without much concern for what the next few moments in this reality might hold for him, Crowley clutched the angel blade. He could no longer lift his eyes, much less defend himself.

A pair of scuffed boots and the lowered muzzle of a rifle came into his narrow view. From across a vast distance, he could hear the gruff sympathy of a familiar voice.

"Well, looks like a fine mess you've gotten yer'self into. I'm guess'n you're one of those idjits come through that glowing tear in space and time? Some people, can't leave well enough alone, can they?"

As Crowley confirmed to himself that, yes, this was exactly how he was going to die, the blackness overtook him, and everything – the pain and anguish, the longing and regret – faded with him out of existence.

* * *

Thank you for reading! There will be two more chapters in Scene from an Alt!Dimension. The second chapter will be posted soon. There will be a third and final chapter after the conclusion of Season 13, when we know how the canon pans out. Reviews and messages are much appreciated, and encourage more work.


	2. Chapter 2: Fare Thee Well

Scene from an Alt!Dimension

Chapter 2: Farewell Encounter

.

* * *

Summary: In that alternate universe, word of the miraculous defeat of the angel brigade has reached other encampments. Now many are streaming into the relative safety of the camp; among them is a man who claims he knows Mary Winchester. Missing scenes from Season 13. Crowley Lives! Slight-AU Vignette

* * *

.

In the aftermath of the angel attack and its successful defeat, people began streaming into the relative safety of the small encampment of survivors nestled in the forests of northern Washington. Mary spent her days assisting in the erection of temporary shelters, discussing battle tactics with the ragtag rebellion that was quickly forming around the now-idolized Nephilim, and wondering if there would ever come a day when the world was not in need of saving.

She was avoiding a meeting of rebel leaders regarding potentially combining magic and technology, spearheaded by a feisty redheaded hacker, when Bobby found her.

"If you're about done making that tent look all dilapidated chic, there's someone just arrived who says he know ya."

There was no way in hell that could bode well.

"What do you mean, knows me?" Mary let the tarp she'd been fighting with fall to the side and joined Bobby up on the path. He turned and started back the way he'd come, and Mary fell in step beside him. "Me, as in Mary Campbell? Or me, as in Mary Winchester?"

"Seems to be the latter," Bobby replied, pushing back his beret in consternation.

"You get a name?"

"I get the feeling you're gonna know 'em when you see 'em."

"You got something you want to tell me, Bobby?" Mary had grown rather fond of the old hunter, despite his terseness and occasionally belligerent manner. She was acutely aware of how much she owed the Bobby from her own reality, for the part he played in raising and protecting her boys. That this Bobby had never known Dean and Sam Winchester didn't alter the gratitude she felt towards the gruff soldier.

"Never told me his name. You'd think saving a man's life would earn you a little appreciation, first name basis at least, but that ain't the way of the world no more." The path continued on into another part of the camp, where more established newcomers mingled with camp residents over cooking fires, bartered rations and generally sought community. Here, even wary loners, unwilling to pitch even the most temporary of tents, gathered for a bit of companionship.

"Found him half dead not far from where you and yours came through that rift. Likely not too long after. S'what got me thinking there's a chance the two of you know each other."

Dread began to curl in her stomach. The rift had reopened. And one of her boys – Dean, Sam, maybe Castiel – had come barreling in to rescue her, only to be injured and stranded in this gray nightmare.

Why did they come through the rift alone, unprepared? Why hadn't they told Bobby who they were?

And more importantly, why were they here at all?

In her long months of capture in Michael's prison, Mary had consoled herself with thoughts of her boys. She had imagined their shock and dismay as the rift closed behind her. Imagined the stupidity caused by grief. And eventually, the acceptance that she was gone, the hunter pyre lit in her honor. She had tried to reach across realities and envelop both her boys in a last, loving embrace. Say she was sorry, and proud, and goodbye. It had been comforting, to imagine that.

And now, that soothing reality was being ripped away.

"Luckily, I had a little hidey hole not too far from there, for emergencies and such. Patched him up best I could, waited out what seemed like the inevitable. But," Bobby shook his head, "the world's a messed up place. People you think are gonna make it, die. And those you think ain't going to pull through, do just fine. Dropped him off at another camp couple days later. Didn't think much about it, other than if the angels or somebody from some other universe showed up looking for him, I didn't want to be anywhere nearby when they found 'em."

Bobby chuckled to himself. "That's what living in a hell-scape does to ya. Alternative realities and all that? Just one more dang thing you gotta survive. Guess'n I shoulda mentioned it to ya sooner."

"We've all been rather busy," Mary managed.

They parted ways then, Bobby heading back towards the meeting Mary was so intent on avoiding, and she quickened her pace, continuing deeper into the camp.

Only to stop dead in her tracks.

Ahead of her on the path, looking equally stunned, was Crowley.

Considering the last she had seen of the demon was a half-conscious corpse out in the wasteland, done in by his own angel blade and a heroic impulse Mary had not been aware he possessed, seeing Crowley alive was as much as shock as his appearance.

Had she not been looking for a familiar face, Mary would never have recognized him.

The man in front of her was lean under the familiar knee-length black coat, a few sizes too large now and clearly patched in places. Underneath, Crowley appeared to be wearing the same battle-ready attire as the other rebels in camp, cargo pants and canvas jacket over a black shirt, crusted with dry mud and old blood. Half his face was a mottled bruise still healing. She took in his bloodied knuckles, the medic's bag from another century dangling off one shoulder, the pair of scuffed doc martens the stylish demon she had known in another world would never have worn.

Crowley looked dirty and worn. Weary.

He looked, to put it simply, as threadbare as Mary. He looked human.

And the expression on his face. Seeing it was all Mary needed to know Crowley has been through as much hell here as she had. It was full of incredulity and relief, weathered but real, and she realized the same smile was starting to spread across both their faces. Because maybe in that other world, they hadn't even been cautious allies. But in this one, they were familiar faces, reminders of home, and hope that they just might see two particular boys again.

Crowley didn't so much saunter over to Mary as trudge, legs refusing to bend at the knees and heels scuffing in the dirt.

"Mother Mary," he offered in greeting, voice course and beleaguered.

"Crowley. I'm…" She hesitated, but the giddiness engendered by the familiarity he represented was too strong. "I'm glad you're alive."

"The same."

Crowley tugged gently at the strap of his bag, seemingly both awkward at their sudden intimacy and unwilling to break from the headiness of the moment. "I never doubted it, not for a moment. Knew no matter what Lucifer or this world threw at you, you'd make it through alright. You're a Winchester, after all."

Mary didn't know what to say to that.

"What happened after we parted ways?"

"Lucifer and I managed to get captured by Michael. It's been a hard couple of months."

"I can imagine."

And he could, she could see that. And suddenly, Mary realized that as hard as it has been for her, dragged around by Lucifer, imprisoned and tortured by Michael, it must have worse for Crowley. Crowley, whose intended sacrifice had rendered him human. Which likely meant he now possessed a soul.

She tried to imagine what it had been like for the former demon, all these months. Not knowing if Mary was alive. Powerless for the first time in centuries. Vulnerable. And likely awash in the complexities and conscience of humanity. Adrift and alone in this world. She thought of the people Bobby said lost their sanity, had grown apathetic to life. It was beyond belief Crowley was even on his feet.

"What about you? How did you survive?"

His smile shifted into one closer to the demon she had known. Self-deprecating amusement, tinged with something Mary couldn't quite place. A self-awareness, maybe. "As I said, I knew you were alive. And," he gave her a pointed look, as if he expected dissention, "I know your boys will come for you. Somehow, those two knuckleheads will find a way."

Before Mary could argue his point, Crowley turned to dig in his bag. He brought out a battered book of some sort, and held it out to Mary.

"Here. Rare to find paper in this reality. Even rarer for it to not already be covered in someone else's scribblings. Bartered that blasted angel blade for it."

Mary took it hesitantly in her hands, and cracked it open to a random page. It was filled with a terse script scratched out in various colors of ink and pencil. Most of what she read, she didn't understand. Names and contact information, account numbers and sums of money. Coordinates, long lists that looked to be inventories, and counter spell instructions.

"What is this?"

"It's for Sam and Dean. Everything they'll need to close the gates of Hell from the outside, sans trials. Plus all my contacts, access to all my financial accounts and properties, lists of resources and magical artifacts that may prove useful. Anything and everything I could think of." He hesitated before continuing. "It would be fair to say that compiling this little repository of information kept me sane the last few months. It helped," he added sincerely, looking Mary in the eye, "knowing I might be able to provide some small bit of good for you lot. Kept the darkness at bay, as it were."

Mary didn't have to ask what darkness Crowley meant. While she had her own set of demons, the guilt that trailed after her and the doubt that beset even her best intentions, it was likely nothing compared to suddenly having humanity crushing down on you like that. The man she'd loved had found a similar respite from grief and depression in keeping a journal.

"Crowley, I-I don't know what to say. Thank you."

He waved her thanks away as though it might unmoor him. "Please, don't. Just make sure it gets to your boys. Wouldn't want all my bouts of fisty-cuffs over this world's limited supply of writing implements to have been for nothing. Apocalypse worlds and underfunded non-profits: two places good pens are a rare and valuable commodity."

"Well, when we get back, you can have a box store's worth of pens. Personally, my first priority is a hot shower and some coffee, black."

The man before her, looking and acting very little like the demon she had known, shook his head. "I gave you the book because I'm not going back, luv. There's nothing left for me there."

"What? What the hell are you talking about? There's nothing left for you _here_."

Crowley refused to meet her eyes, instead looking around the camp. She followed his gaze, to the little family gathered around a small camp fire, to the elderly man sharing his scraps with a dog missing a back leg.

"Quite the opposite, actually. I've always been good at seeing opportunities where others don't. And here, there are plenty. There's a clean slate. No demons pursuing an abdicated king. No one who knows my past, my sins. I've already offered my services to that little familiar firebrand, the one leading this rebellion. Right now, they need heroes who can swing a sword. After that? They'll be in need of organization, governance, real administration. Someone who can see beyond today, to what will need to be done in the future, to rebuild. That's something I can offer."

Crowley's gaze flickered back to Mary, surprisingly earnest, a whole world being envisioned behind his eyes.

She knew he wasn't wrong. What little Mary knew about Crowley, what her boys had told her, this was something he was entirely capable of accomplishing. Bean counter, an old nemesis had supposedly called him. An experienced administrator, Sam had said once, his only positive remark about their demonic ally.

It was as though she could see the plans taking form between them. While most people understandably couldn't think beyond the daily struggle for survival, Crowley was months if not years ahead of them. Building infrastructure, maintaining order, growing crops, training for defense, communicating with encampments farther and farther afield – all of it, Crowley was already plotting and outlining in his mind. Given time and the necessary resources, he was entirely capable of rebuilding the world. The only thing standing in the way were the angels. And suddenly, Mary realized that if anyone would have a prayer of restoring modern civilization after Jack defeated those winged dickbags, it would be this former King of Hell.

Crowley had sacrificed himself out of hopelessness and desperation, beset by failure on all sides, rejected by the few people he cared for. But it hadn't been death. It was rebirth, with a chance at redemption.

Mary felt envy writhe within her, and crushed it out of shame. In its wake came a feeling of abandonment.

"But what about us?" She asked, unearned betrayal rising up to color her demand. "What about Dean, and Sam?"

"That's what the journal is for," Crowley replied, motioning to the book clasped in her hand, all but forgotten.

"Okay, look. I know we've had some differences recently – "

"Recently?"

"But you don't belong here. Even if you have the best intentions, you want to help these people, this isn't your world."

"As if my world wants or needs me. Mary – " he took a step toward her. His hand brushed her shoulder, just barely, in what she suspected was a gesture of consolation.

Mary clocked him, hard as she could. Her fist connected with his jaw. It was evidence of how tired and underfed Mary was that there wasn't the sound of bone breaking. Just the whomp of force into flesh.

And then Crowley was on his back in the dirt, coat splayed and boots akimbo.

Others looked up from their places around camp fires and tents, but violence was common enough in the camps, no one interceded.

Mary stood over the fallen former demon, breathing hard, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for the feeling inside her to settle.

"Well," Crowley remarked from his place at her feet, rubbing his jaw, "That's only fair. When we first met, you did warn me not to touch you. Silly me, hoping we were past that unpleasantness."

"Get up," Mary nudged him with her boot.

The man just looked at her, as if daring her to insist on her demand.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" She snapped, fury carrying away her jealousy and doubts. "Some hero, whose going to save all these people? You don't fool me, Crowley. You're not a hero. You didn't stab yourself with that angel blade to protect our world, or retaliate against Lucifer, or any other noble, self-sacrificing reason. You did it because you wanted a way out. Because you knew that even if we'd won the day, nothing would have changed. Not for you. Not after what you did, betraying us like that."

Crowley didn't wince, or blink, or look away. He met her eyes, and somehow, that just infuriated Mary even further. She tossed the book beside Crowley in the dirt.

"Admit it! You said it as much yourself: you'd given up! What did you have left, having lost Hell? You weren't going to have your power, your influence. You lost your mother, and your son, and you lost Dean and Sam after what you did. You were _never_ going to be family."

That had come out harsher than she had meant it, but now that she's started, Mary couldn't stop. She was shouting now, and tears began to form in the corners of her eyes.

"They trusted you! They believed in you, and every time, you let them down. Just like always. You were never going to be what they needed you to be, were never going to be there for them when it mattered. Going up against Lucifer, taking the risk of ending up in this hell – that wasn't doing the right thing. It was doing the _easy_ thing. Escaping all the heartache and the loneliness and the mistakes. But no matter what you do, or how far away you try to run, it is always right there behind you. And that," Mary jabbed a finger at the man on the ground, seething, "that is never going to change."

No escape. Even in dying for the people she loved, there was no escape.

For a long moment, the air was tense. Crowley just continued to stare up at her, calm and resolute. Mary took a step back, startled.

Around them, the normal noises of the camp resumed.

Crowley looked at the ground, as if considering, and then pushed himself to his feet.

He smoothed out his patched coat, settled the bag strap securely on his shoulder, and dusted off his hands. "Feel better?"

"I…"After such an ardent outburst, what was there to say? Mary ran a hand across her tear-streaked face and through her snarled mess of hair. Crowley gave her a moment to compose herself, before letting out a sharp sigh that echoed Mary's own tangle of emotions.

"Here's the thing, luv. You're not wrong. About any of it." He bent, and picked up the book, wiped the cover off with a deft brush of one hand.

Then, he held it out to her.

"About either of us."

Mary opened her mouth, choked on tears, coughed to get air in. The man in front of her waited patiently. Slowly, she reached out for the book.

Crowley passed it to her, then gently rocked back on his heels. "I don't know what you did that got you here. Other than that it clearly wasn't motivated by noble intentions. Not entirely, anyway. We've got that in common. The difference between you and I, Mary, is that the boys will forgive your transgressions, whatever they may be."

Suddenly consumed by the creases in the journal's cover, she forced out "You can't know that for sure."

"I'd like to think, after our years of various misadventures together, and a little perusal through a particular book series, that I know Sam and Dean rather well. And if there is one thing those two care about above all else, its family."

When she could bring herself to look up, Crowley seemed to be considering her. "So really, you needn't worry. They'll be along soon enough, and you'll find yourself clasped in the safely of their flannelled arms, all errors in judgement behind you."

Mary took a deep breath, and forced herself to acknowledge how much she had been dreading her sons' arrival. Because while there would be the joy of reuniting, it would inevitably be followed by the recriminations for her foolhardy and self-serving actions before the rift closed.

Because at the heart of it, she hadn't gone up against Lucifer to protect Sam and Dean, or to buy them time, or even as justice for everything the archangel had indirectly forced her to suffer.

Mary had done it because she had wanted an easy way out, a meaningful death, and someone else to blame for her choices.

For her husband's suffering.

For Dean's lack of a childhood.

For Sam being used as a pawn by Heaven and Hell.

But there was really only Mary. And as much as she wanted to run away, as much as she feared that having inadvertently betrayed and failed her sons for a second time could only lead to further suffering for all of them, she had to go back.

Go back, and try to make amends.

"You're right," she admitted. "Because that's who Sam and Dean are. It won't be easy, but I know they'll forgive me. And," Mary added, "that's why you have to come back as well."

The former demon cocked his jaw and looked away. "As you so adamantly pointed out just now, I am not, in point of fact, family."

Remorse surged through her in an instant. "Crowley-"

"And," he interrupted, "as I said before, I have the opportunity here to lay claim to a clean slate. I'm hardly about to mar that with a belated induction into the Winchester family."

Mary huffed. "And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Crowley eyed her for a moment, that old calculating stare as familiar as it was unsettling. Then he hefted his bag, and turned on his heel.

"It means that I'm not about to abandon or jeopardize the world on account of family. No matter how much it hurts. Give my love to the boys when you see them."

Uncertain of what to say, either in castigation or encouragement, Mary watched Crowley walk off into the camp, this departure weighing heavier than his death ever had.

.

* * *

.

Thank you for reading! There will be a third and final chapter, at the conclusion of Season 13, when we know how the canon pans out. Reviews and messages are much appreciated, and encourage more work.


	3. Chapter 3: A World of Pains and Troubles

Scene From An Alt!Dimension

Chapter 3: A World of Pains and Troubles

* * *

Summary: In that alternative universe, Crowley has found a place to belong, people who trust him, and a purpose. Unsurprising, then, that the Winchester brothers show up just in time to ruin everything. Alternative Season 13 "second to last episode" season finale the fandom and characters deserved. Third chapter of Scene From An Alt!Dimension.

* * *

It was a bright, blusterous day in the mountains along the western coast, a fortunately temperate winter having given way to a wet, windy spring. All around Crowley, the damp canvas of the tent that served as the rebel headquarters fluttered and flapped, and errant breezes slipped in to rustle and dislodge his work. The light that filtered in was soft and yellowed. A lantern worrisomely swayed above the table that was littered with papers, maps, correspondence, tattered pages of spell books, and the mangled anatomy of mankind's technological progeny, long defunct.

In the midst of so much heresy, Crowley could not have been more content.

There was work to be done here, and quite a lot of it. All of it crucial to the survival of what little remained of the human race in this cinereal dystopia. He had been correct in his assumptions that his services – his knowledge of the pre-industrial world, his expertise in administration and infrastructure, his vast experience with angels and the supernatural – were welcome among the rebel leadership. They had provided Crowley with the necessary resources, and he set to work constructing the means by which to save the world.

Now, after months of research, preliminary designs, experimental models, trial-runs belching smoky failure into his face, and countless other infinitesimally small steps forwards, Crowley was on the verge. Here was accomplishment. Here was purpose, satisfying and invigorating in the same breath.

"Necessity," Crowley muttered to himself as he stood, eyeing the latest sketch laid out on the table, fluttering corners secured with river rocks, "truly is the mother of innovation."

A triangular shaft of light cut across this latest design as the tent flap opened, and Castiel appeared, heralded with uneven fluttering that could have been either permanently damaged wings or just the wind.

"Crowley," he offered in easy greeting, glancing around at the other's handiwork. "This tent's begun to look like the set of MythBusters."

A pop culture reference made with ease. Crowley would never get used to it.

"If Savage and Hyneman ever attempted to merge magic and technology, I doubt they would've had much better luck," Crowley replied with a weary smile. "But I believe I've got it, at last." He tapped his latest blueprint with ink-stained fingers. "Look here."

Castiel moved to stand beside Crowley, arms crossed and lips silently performing the spell annotated in Enochian along the margins of the page.

Crowley watched the angel out of the corner of his eye, as always searching for similarities and variances.

Every time Crowley thought he had encountered every incarnation of Castiel - from insufferable soldier, power-hungry demi-god, hopeless dope fiend, to heartbreakingly optimistic human – another visage of the angel joined the cast. Somehow, the fact that Castiel existed in this world, when the Winchesters did not, was reassuring. Like at least, somewhere, someone got something right.

This Castiel was soft fleece wrapped around a steel blade. He was focused and charismatic, good-humored and maybe even a little charming, if scruffy and battered from years of living among the refugees of humankind. A patch covered his left eye, gouged out by a fellow angel's blade some years ago. He wore a dusty black jacket over a dark shirt and pants, almost melding into the shadows around him, and was weighed down by the same kit their fellow combatants carried: weapons, ammo, angel blade, short-wave radio, iron determination and the remorseless burden of hope. For all that, this Castiel stood straight and carried himself like the leader he had become in the absence of all other options.

And Castiel was a leader, no doubt about it. He bore his responsibilities with confidence and patience, and spoke with an air that both inspired and reassured. Creases around his eyes and mouth juxtaposed those of Cas, earned through disparate instances of fumbled good intentions, unavoidable mistakes, and continual loss. If he was plagued by similar doubts, however, it was evident this Castiel did not lack a sense of purpose.

He had found his place among the persecuted, insuppressible tatters of humanity. And in the great war between angels and mud monkeys, he had chosen his side.

So had Crowley.

"It will work?" Castiel turned an eager, smiling eye on his second in command.

Anyone else would have been perturbed by the intensity of the angel's stare, the way his presence edged upon against their own. Personal space, Crowley heard Dean mutter. He mentally brushed the voice away.

"I would bet my soul on it," he replied, quirking an eyebrow at the rebel commander. The significance of the offer was lost on this Castiel, of course, not knowing Crowley's previous allegiances. That Crowley was confident would be enough for him.

Someone's trust. What a priceless thing to have acquired.

It was imperative that they succeed in weaponizing the banishment sigil, turning it into a handheld bomb that could be lobbed at angelic combatants at will. The more advanced technology Crowley was currently working on melded these bombs with the few aerial drones Charlie had managed to restore, to fly into angel encampments. It would provide resistance forces with an unassailable advantage, and make the next stage in Crowley's plan obtainable.

Because this was just step one. Once they had the necessary combination of spellcraft, blood magic and technology, they would manufacture dozens of these grenades and drones, to equip select fighters from among Castiel's forces, who were currently preparing for the war's most decisive action. Both Castiel and Crowley – and Charlie, upon her return from special assignment among Bobby's forces – would be among them.

Step two involved using this new advantage for a singular purpose: retrieving the prophet and his tablets from Michael's grasp.

Kevin Tran. No matter the universe, the boy never seemed to catch a break.

The ever-present knife in his recently restored heart twisted at the thought of the prophet, both the one dead in Crowley's world and the one still alive in this one. He tried not to dwell on memories of Kevin, or anyone, really – nothing good could ever come of that. Nothing productive, certainly. Just more inadequate rationalizations and self-recrimination, more weeping when he was sure no one would see, and more sleepless nights of pacing the camp's perimeter, traveling down endless roads of what-if's and should have's, unable to sleep for the indescribable atrocities which populated his dreams.

With conscious effort, Crowley turned his thoughts from the wayward prophet and his plight back to the finale stage of his plan.

Once the tablets and their interpreter were safe within Castiel's care, they could discern the three trials necessary to close the Gates of Heaven. It would cost a life, no doubt, but a single soul was well worth locking Michael and his angelic army away forever.

Castiel and Crowley had spent countless hours debating who would make that sacrifice, their sessions often ending in heated arguments and forlorn separation. Ever dutiful, Castiel insisted on shouldering what was undoubtedly the most dubious honor in the history of the universe, short of Lucifer's own designation as God's favorite. There were obvious arguments against it, Crowley consistently pointed out. Castiel was the leader of the resistance, their bulwark against despair, the inspiration for whatever world would come after. Castiel always countered that the closing of the Gates ensured not only Michael's banishment, but his own as well.

"I'd much rather give up my existence," Castiel had reflected, with the same sad, defeated smile Crowley had seen so often on Dean's face, "than spend eternity imprisoned with the brethren I so willingly betrayed. This would be the conscientious thing to do."

"Not to mention self-aggrandizing," Crowley had snapped. That wasn't hypocrisy on his part. It was an attempt to steer Castiel away from making the same mistake.

Crowley had only briefly considered taking on the trials himself. What a grand gesture of atonement that would be. But the suicidal inclination brought on by consistent depression and outright rejection that previously plagued him had abated. And he didn't think it particularly prideful to believe he could be of more use to humankind alive than dead.

Castiel and Crowley had not come to an agreement on the issue, but there was still time.

The nephilim, with his foolhardy attempts at heroism, was buying it for them.

Even after nearly a year of being human, Crowley still struggled with the juxtaposing contempt and mournful sympathy the boy inspired in him. Jack Kline was undoubtable useful, keeping the angels engaged, obscuring Crowley's plans, and draining resources away from efforts to open another rift. But the nephilim had no real hope of destroying Michael's forces. The boy's only real asset was his undeniably immense, raw power. Beyond that, he was hobbled by his youth and his naiveté, his lack of experience and strategy, and what Crowley recognized instantly as a typical Winchester's dogged disbelief in his ability to fail. The nephilim believed if he only continued to push forward, with good intentions and vainglorious self-sacrifice, that somehow, against all odds, he would win. That his was a noble and just cause, and therefore, all would turn out right in the end.

So Crowley, and Castiel, had reluctantly agreed to do what countless generals had done throughout the long, bloody history of war. Allow the idealistic to throw themselves against the ramparts and distract the enemy, while they prepared the way for actual victory.

All they needed now was for Jack to hold out a little longer.

"That very well might work," Castiel crossed to the other side of the table, to observe a map pinned to the tent wall. He pulled out the pin representing the nephilim's forces, and moved it closer to Michael's stronghold, and the prophet, marked on the map. "But we will have to use what we have. Our timetable has been stepped up."

Bollocks.

"Why?" Crowley sighed in annoyance, "What's happened?"

"Charlie's returned. She reports another rift opened. It would seem Mary Winchester has been joined by her sons, Sam and Dean."

A sudden gust of wind rushed up against the tent, causing the canvas to roar and snap, as if to emphasize the significance of Castiel's statement. The lantern above swung wildly, sunlight burst in from the flap and from under the sides of the tent, as if the entire structure was about to morph into wings and carry them away. Meticulous plans and sketches, months of hard work and consideration, were swept up and tossed about the tent.

Crowley snarled and snatched the pages out of the air, his smoldering irritation enough, in another life, to blacken the paper where he touched it.

When the gust was over, he leaned against the table, head bent, eyes closed, and sighed. "Then we _are_ out of time."

Castiel clearly hesitated before turning to face his friend. "I thought you'd be pleased," he said, with a rueful smile. The angel splayed his fingertips across the course surface of the table and tapped lightly, still searching for the right words. At last, he murmured, "To be reunited with them."

In the space of a breath, Crowley did a quick calculation.

Nearly six months now. Six months, he had been a member of the rebels' inner circle. All those months, working on their grand plan and the necessary combination of magic and technology. Months of the two of them, and occasionally Charlie, hunched over tables, or around campfires, or sometimes even crouching in slick, moss-choked caves as angel battalions flew over, reviewing schematics and spells. Nights lit by candlelight or accompanied by the buzz of generators chugging along on the last of their diesel. Days, catching snippets of sleep, dreaming of enchanted drones and surprise attacks and the backseat of the Impala. Wild jamborees where humanity's refugees gathered in boisterous revelry, in celebration of _life_. Quiet, patient hours of Castiel and Crowley, standing as they were now, in this tent wherever it might be pitched, working side by side. Misty dawns, when Crowley couldn't sleep and Castiel didn't need to, slouched in camp chairs at the edge of the rebel base, playing chess with hand-carved pieces, a gift from old Bobby Singer. Crowley could count on one hand the times he had indulged in a sip of the blinding scorch of Hellfire the rebels claimed to be moonshine – never enough to lose control, to let memories of torture, depravity, or twisted affection seep into his conscious mind.

Months of relearning how to wash and dress, to avoid injury and take care against sickness. Months of measly rations hastily scarfed, of hunger so sharp, he had been reminded of a desperate, ragged childhood on the moors, hundreds of years before. Months of learning to be human all over again, with everything that entailed.

Crowley could only guess at what point he had given himself away.

"You knew."

"Of course. The moment we met, I could see that you were from someplace else." Castiel looked even more apologetic as he added, "And I am, uh, familiar with the you that is native to this reality."

Crowley blew out a breath, and looked away. "Course you are," he mumbled.

"We collaborated in an attempt to prevent the apocalypse. It was an uneasy alliance, to say the least. Most demons were destroyed during the war between Heaven and Hell. Crowley – this world's Crowley – survived by pledging his loyalty to Michael. I suppose," Castiel added dryly, "you could say he now serves Heaven." He glanced upwards derisively, towards the pitched roof of the tent and beyond, to the baleful sky and into the ruins of Heaven. When he sighed, a light flutter sent the pages on the table and floor skittering away, as broken wings rustled in agitation, then settled back into place. "The abomination it's become, anyway."

Not for the first time, Crowley cursed the weakness of his new human existence. He ground his teeth and set his gaze, hoping to forestall the rush of emotions battering his defenses as the wind battered their pathetic headquarters.

Crowley had assumed, of course, that he existed in this world, somewhere. Through subtle inquiry and persistence, Crowley had managed to piece together most of the history of this reality, where its crippled timeline had slouched off like so much decomposing byproduct from the itinerary of his own dimension. It all traced back to those two well-coiffed, plaid simpletons, the Winchesters – or in this case, the lack of them. Crowley had existed long before then, so it was simple deduction to assume some incarnation of self called this dimension home.

But really, he'd rather hoped this reality's Crowley was dead and gone, at the end of some angel blade or hunter's knife. The last year had been spent facing up to what he'd been before the cure. What he'd done, even after it. The last thing Crowley wanted – _needed_ – was to come face to face with _that thing_ so incapable of recognizing or mitigating its own depravity, or to be reminded of how inadvertent his own redemption had been.

His trepidation over such an encounter was laced with the premonition of loss. Crowley _cherished_ what he and Castiel had between them. The comfortable comradery and ardent friendship. The brotherly affection that allowed for frustration as well as fondness, that offered respite from the world's endless adversities and callousness. Crowley had always assumed that if Castiel suspected, even for a moment, his former nature and previous mistakes, their friendship would surely suffer.

And yet.

Crowley raised a brow, then his eyes to meet the angel's gaze, and inquired softly, "If that's the case, then why, for even a moment, would you trust me?"

He was completely unprepared for the smile Castiel offered him.

It was gentle, and sincere, just the corner of his mouth tugging up. And it wasn't meant for him. It was meant for a particular hunter who apparently didn't have the decency to be born in this reality. That was the only time Crowley had ever seen that smile on Cas' face. It was meant for Dean, and Dean alone.

But here, in this weary, broken world, that smile was for Crowley.

"Because if there's no room in this world for second chances, we may as well give up right now."

For a long moment, angel and former demon stared at each other, one with affectionate conviction and the other with cautious entreaty, the tent rustling gently around them.

"I hope you're right," Crowley said at last, forcing a breath past the brittle emotion that constricted his lungs. To steady himself, Crowley broke from his friend's one-eyed gaze and gathered the papers on the desk into neat piles, flattening out those he had carelessly crushed when snatching them from the wind. "It's why I'm here, after all."

"I know I should say I am sorry you could not find such affirmation in your own reality." Castiel remarked, adding with a slight shrug of his shoulders and roguish mirth, "But I'm not."

Crowley didn't expect what poured out of him next. Maybe, for the first time encountering empathy and able to be open about the subject, he needed to unburden himself. Like bitter bile, the words and their accompanying emotions forced their way up out of his mouth, and Crowley regretted saying them even as his soul felt purged in doing so. "There was nothing left for me there – just malice, brutality and spite, followed by admittedly-poor attempts at amends." His jaw worked, gnawing at the bone of his discontent. "I _was_ your Crowley, once. I garbed myself in all the splendor and authority of Hell, wallowing in the depravity of it all. And enjoyed it, I might add. Nothing could touch me, nothing mattered. In my damnation, I was perfection."

And then came the Winchesters. Then came a scorching light that burned away the numbness and left Crowley raw to everything he had been and done. He had wanted to die, there, strapped to that chair with the cure coursing through him. He had wanted to simply _end_ and earn reprieve through his absence in the world. Or, in his saner moments, to reverse it all, to drag the suffering and misery away from those he now saw as his victims and wrap it around himself, be buried alive within it. That would count for something, wouldn't it, Crowley had thought at the time. Forgiveness, he wondered later, was that obtainable? Redemption? No. Forgiveness? Hardly. The march of months had turned into years, and the lingering effects of the cure had cooled. That quiet insistence inside Crowley remained – the desire to be good, the need to be loved – but without some external influence, he had long known nothing would come of it.

"After the cure," his large, luminous eyes looked away, searching amongst the papers for illumination, comprehension. "I didn't know how to be anything better than what I was. And I certainly didn't get any help there." Yes, they had infused him with the semblance of humanity and their own dubious, often self-serving morality, and left him to rot. But even then, Crowley had understood. He had never needed the Winchesters to explain their animosity towards him. Crowley had tried to be better, regardless. What had they wanted? An outright apology? Couldn't Sam and Dean see - Crowley's pride had become the only bulwark against despair, against self-annihilation. Couldn't they have glimpsed behind the smirk and the snark and seen a man, confronted by his atrocities, barely holding onto his sanity? If he had given way, even a little – and for what? To be met with rejection, mockery, dismissal? Sam had granted him all that, in those few moments Crowley had confessed to a fault-lined vulnerability, with a hex bag in his pocket and a devil's trap buried in his chest. _I thought, if I did…better. That it might_ _ **matter**_ _._ He had been so sure Dean, in the throes of his own darkness, would reach out a hand, offer absolution. But maybe if they had, the Winchester's own fragile sense of righteousness would have broken. Maybe they had needed Crowley to be a demon, for Sam and Dean to remain human. Maybe it wasn't as deep and philosophical as all that – maybe he had merely been a repulsive, self-pitying little monstrosity, barely cognizant of his sins.

"I wasn't _worth_ saving, by anyone's standards. Even my own."

A flutter of canvas and wings startled him. In his reflect and rant, Crowley had almost forgotten Castiel was there.

"Suppose I'm just curious," he murmured, tempted to summon his old snark to hide his embarrassment, but resisting, "how many second chances do we deserve, in the end?"

Castiel appeared to weight his words, then nodded in ascent.

"I've learned a lot during my time among humans. About them," Castiel quirked a brow and grinned in self-conscious amusement. "About myself. I have changed – more, I think, than I am consciously aware. My thoughts on humankind, and the angels, and the nature of existence are not what they once were. And I firmly believe that if someone wishes to change – to be _better_ than they were, whether it is possible to achieve that or not – it is our responsibility to help them. Not to leave them to flounder. To see in them the potential for good. Even if they falter, and must try again, and again. And again. It's the imperfections that make the world – and each other – worthy of our every effort. That is what Lucifer and Michael cannot appreciate about humankind. Their fault _is_ their perfection."

The angel cocked his head to one side in intense contemplation. That singular, sapphire eye stared into Crowley's soul, with its lacework of scars and frayed edges.

"It was the Winchesters," Castiel pronounced softly, "who failed _you_ , Crowley. Not the other way around."

The wind rustled the canvas of the tent, as if in agreement.

As assertive and touching as Castiel's words were, Crowley had a difficult time imagining the affirmation to hold true.

"You don't know those two like I do," Crowley offered in response, with a rueful smile and tilt of the head. And then, to cast away the weight of their conversation, he gestured with the sweep of his hand at the latest sketch, as if to brush it away with the breeze. "Hardly worth anything now, all this. Likely, the boys've already found a way to win this war and set everything right."

Ah, well. What mattered was saving the day, not who did the saving, he supposed.

Castiel nodded, thought Crowley thought he saw exasperation in his friend's face.

"I do not know Dean and Sam Winchester, but they apparently _do_ have a way of making a mess. Lucifer has been captured by Michael. It's not long before Michael opens a rift now, and escapes to destroy another world. Their small group has set off to save Lucifer, and will likely be captured or killed. We must bring the army to join them, or lose everything."

"What?!" Crowley stammered, his thoughts on souls and second chances scattered to the corners of his mind. "Why didn't you _bloody well say so_?!"

Fucking Winchesters. They couldn't have been in this dimension for – what – two, three days? And not only had they singlehandedly managed to smash all of Crowley's schemes, they'd set the stage for the very real possibility of _**two**_ apocalypses! Honestly, how much damage could those two _do?!_

Crowley allowed himself his own infuriated, half-appreciative sigh and roll of the eyes.

Damn it. He'd missed those flannel-clad nightmares.

To his surprise, Castiel looked somewhat sheepish as he came around to join Crowley on the other side of the table. "We have accomplished a great deal together. And – " How was it possible a being of such divinity and antiquity could look as bashful and earnest as a schoolboy? It was perhaps the one countenance shared by the angel across dimensions," – I have enjoyed our friendship. I will be sad to see you leave with them, should any of us survive."

"I'm not going back, Cas." He couldn't help but employ the term of endearment so unfamiliar to the angel.

If he left, if Crowley returned to his own reality, what would there be for him there? How many years had he already wasted, lingering at the edges of the Winchester's circle, seeking reformation, seeking approval and belonging and purpose? They would never accept or forgive him. Mary Winchester's word from months ago came back to it. She had been talking about herself in that tirade of fault and failure. But she hadn't been wrong. He would never be family. They would never be able to see he was better than what he'd been.

And honestly, Crowley wasn't entirely sure that he was.

As if reading his thoughts, Castiel grew solemn. Straightening, he became the stern leader, the wise advisor, the angelic protector of all humankind. Which, suddenly, included Crowley.

Castiel placed a firm, reassuring hand on Crowley's shoulder.

"Can you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is, to school an intelligence, and make it a soul?"

Crowley narrowed his eyes and stared at the angel in befuddled annoyance. If it wasn't popular culture, it was literary references.

"Keats? Really, Castiel?"

Castiel smiled and nodded. "We are, all of us, _more_ than what we are. Humans, angels, demons. We are all striving towards it, together." He patted Crowley's shoulder and turned to leave.

"Come on," Castiel shouldered aside the tent flap in one deft motion and strode out into the sunlight and a fresh gale. "We are the cavalry, and we cannot be late."

* * *

Thanks for reading, and sorry for the lengthy delay. I hope you enjoyed this _alternative_ -alternative Castiel, a combination of End!verse Cas and Misha, with a good dash of stern rebel commander. Please leave a review – flowery praise, dismissive grunt, searing flame – or a kudos, as any feedback is much appreciated. The next chapter is already half written, and will hopefully be posted soon.


	4. Chapter 4: From Frying Pan to Fire

Scene From An Alt!Dimension

Chapter 3: From Frying Pan to Fire

* * *

Summary: In that alternate universe, the boys' rescue of their mom and the nephilim doesn't go as planned. At least the Winchesters have all been reunited. There's only one thing left to do now: save the world from Michael. And then, from Jack. Alternative Season 13 finale the fandom and characters deserved. Third chapter of Scene From An Alt!Dimension.

* * *

In the all-encompassing darkness of night in a world fallen into an apocalyptic dystopia, Dean stood on the flattened plateau above a valley, and surveyed the army below him.

The angel encampment lay in silence. Burning stakes offered dim points of light across the pot-marked earth, that uncomfortably familiar wasteland of towering spikes and desolation. Scattered, still figures stood as if in suspension, though Dean had been around enough angels to know the hum across his skin was the keen vibration of expectation generated by the horde below.

In the center of the wastes slouched a church, all clapboard and desiccation, its exterior painted with sigils illegible in the dark. From between the slats, candlelight flickered.

"Dean," asked a youthful voice from out of the dark. "May I join you?"

"Course, kid," Dean replied softly, feeling more than seeing Jack take position beside him on the ridge. The nephilim's presence seemed to reverberate in the weight of the night surrounding them, with a raw power just a little too eager to be unleashed.

It set Dean's teeth on edge. Just about everything here did that.

Like everything else in his life, this alternative reality had turned out to be more complicated than he'd been hoping. Last Dean had seen of it – that splintered, ashen landscape with its towering spikes and impervious horizon – had seemed pretty straightforward. He had imagined this world to be another Purgatory. Simplistic and most likely fatal. Where the earth had been scorched, nothing grew, almost nothing lived, and it was a veritable free for all in the fight to survive.

Dean could have dealt with that world. He wasn't sure what that said about him – nothing good, most likely.

Instead, turned out that wasteland was just a blast zone, where the worst of the battles during the apocalypse had touched down on earth. The rest of the world? Riddled with complications, just like back home.

Dean's plan to rescue his mom and the nephilim had been shot all to hell once they'd actually found them. Because in Dean's mind, they were going to bust in, grab Mary and the kid, and drag them back to the relative safety of their own world. And if they had to hack their way through some monsters and – horned? how the hell had that happened, exactly? – demons along the way, then all the better. Blow off a little steam. But this?

They'd barreled into the war-torn remnants of their own world, populated by complicated, traumatized people with full agency, living out a hardscrabble existence, loosely jointed into a federation with barebones aspirations. Sectarian interests and disparate concepts of causes and consequential futures refuted any possibly of a world simplified in the aftermath of the apocalypse.

No one here was a civilian, not by the standards by which the Winchesters normally defined them – people living comfortable lives, unaffected by conflict or scarcity or the supernatural. Most of the people they'd met since coming here had been born into this regime of terror. They weren't fighters, not by a long shot. Because how do you fight against celestial beings that could bend time and space, and make a human being go _pop_ with a snap of their fingers or even an errant thought? But they had the same sort of resilience Dean imagined kids raised in warzones develop. These people were hard kernels, clinging resiliently to the shreds of life they'd retained. They might as well have been an alien species, as far as Dean was concerned. Even Bobby.

No one here needed saving, not the way the Winchesters were used to saving people. Not even Mary and Jack.

Because his reunion with his mom hadn't gone anything like Dean had expected either. Sure, she'd been pleased to see them, and anxious about seeing them _here_. But she hadn't been as grateful as either he or Sam had been expecting. And she hadn't wanted to leave. The last thing Dean wanted was to get embroiled in the Mad Max nightmare of this place, the convoluted reality of this massive humanitarian crisis, the well-functioning resistance hierarchy that apparently involved this world's Castiel and an assortment of familiar, fallen angels.

He and Sam had looked around themselves and had recognized how deeply out of their depth they really were.

And then there was Jack.

"It's time we attack." The nephilim's breathed, almost aglow in the dark with youth and heroism and naiveté.

"Attack?!" Dean barked softly, something twisting in his gut. Not about going up against the angels. About the one standing next to him. "You looked down there, kid?"

"We don't have any choice," Jack replied steadily. Almost eagerly. "Our army may be small, but it will distract them while we rescue Lucifer."

At a distance behind them, there was a muffled cough, and the shuffling of gear from one shoulder to another. Jack's hodgepodge resistance waited in the dark, barely breathing.

That these men and women, wearing scavenged military armor and carrying weapons useless against non-human combatants, were willing to follow Jack into the maw of an almost certain massacre was a testament to the nephilim's messiah-like influence.

Dean had never gone in for the whole awe and worship thing. Beware false prophets, and all that. Even when the prophets – or angels – turned out to be the real McCoy. When he and Cas had first meant, in an explosion of sparks and solemnity, even after witnessing the unveiling of wings and believing the angel to be everything Castiel claimed, Dean still hadn't felt reverence for his holy tax accountant of a deliverer. Innate resistance to such misplaced veneration had kicked in immediately. Good things do happen, Cas had posited.

Not in my experience, Dean spat then.

Not in these people's experience, he thought now.

Why the hell most of them grew starry-eyed at the sight of the impish Beiber-wannabe was beyond Dean. Sure, maybe for some it was the mere prospective of deliverance, however feeble. Hell, everyone needs something or someone to believe in, after all. Still, it unnerved him, the way Jack seemed to intentionally encourage and subsist on these poor wraiths' exaltations.

The dissenters, Dean got. The ones who were wondering just what the hell they were doing out here, in the wastelands, going up against a whole army of angels to rescue _another_ angel, because this _half-angel_ asked it of them. From their perspective, why shouldn't they let Michael slit Lucifer's throat – that part, Dean was totally on board with – and waltz off into some other dimension – which was where Dean had to draw the line. In the end, they were here for the same reason he was – there didn't seem to be a Door #2.

And in the Winchesters' case, when there was, it usually just opened up onto more bad.

He'd tried to tell Sam as much back in Jack's sorry excuse for a base of operations.

"How much longer we going to keep doing this, man?" Dean had demanded, dragging his brother aside. "Solving one problem by rushing headlong into another? I mean, making deals with demons, and-and _Lucifer_ and everything else before this?! You'd think we'd have learned by now, but _here we are_. And if you think that the apocalypse, or the Leviathans, or the Darkness was bad, this –" he waved around at Jack and the camp and the entire messed up world "–this is going to go really, _really_ bad."

Sam had shook his head in that mournful way of his, and shrugged his massive shoulders. "I hear you, Dean. But I don't see what other choice we have, you know?"

"You _know_ how this ends, Sammy." Dean had stared at his brother, every muscle taunt with desperation and fury and the premonition of loss. "It ends with one of us, or both of us, or _all of us_ _**dead**_."

But Dean knew he'd already lost the argument, lost it the moment Jack had declared it was time his ragtag army move against Michael. Maybe they could have talked the others out of it. Maybe back in their own world, the word of the Winchesters counted for something. But here, they were just two more men amongst the multitude of the resolute, the desperate, the barely sane.

They had sent word to Castiel and to Crowley, and set off for the wastelands.

"You're not going to guess who else is here." Amidst all the reunions in camp – or in Lucifer's case, introductions, and subsequent capture by Michael – and the marshalling for war, Mary had found a quiet moment to tell her boys that Crowley was alive, and human, and working with the rebellion.

Of course he is, Dean had thought, relief slackening his shoulders and for just a moment, making the last year and their current situation slightly more endurable. The part of Dean that had quietly come to consider the demon his friend, and blamed himself for Crowley's death, had never really believed him to be dead. Not _Crowley_ , not _like that_. No, Dean had always imagined Crowley was simply plotting his grand, dramatic entrance, or fighting his way back from wherever demons go when they burn out, or simply sulking somewhere. The fourth core member of Team Free Will, as flawed and unrepentant as the rest of them.

Everything Dean had prayed for that bright, wretched dawn – the rising of the sun an apostasy after the closing of the rift and the night of numbing grief that had followed – had come true. Standing behind that lake-side shack, his hand a mess of ribboned skin and bloody splinters, his heart in not much better shape, Dean hadn't so much as swallowed his pride and prayed as demanded restitution. Hadn't they all suffered enough? Hadn't they _sacrificed_ enough?

Dean's prayer had been answered, but typical for him, it had come true in an impossibly complicated and even twisted way. He had gotten back everyone he had lost – Cas, Mary, Crowley – and now might lose them again.

"I can't believe we're doing this." Dean muttered to himself now, scrutinizing the light shining from the ramshackle church nestled in the dustbowl. "Risking everything, for _Lucifer_."

"He's my father," Jack replied peevishly. Bands of golds gleamed at Dean with frustrated intensity. The air fizzled.

Yeah, he was, though until recently, Dean would have been willing to admit that the kid didn't seem all that worse off for it. The boy was proof that it wasn't about where you came from, but what you learned along the way. Nurture beat out nature. Dean liked to think that Sammy proved that too, compassionate to a fault despite the demon blood in his veins. And Cas, rejecting the rigidity and ultimate morality of the angels. And Crowley, who might, once upon a very long time ago, been something resembling a decent human being, only to have been twisted into that salacious viper under Hell's influence. And somehow, slowly, begun to untwist himself, despite the unfulfilled cure. Sure, nature played its part, but when Dean looked at the people around him – at himself – what he saw most was how people could change.

Even those he least expected.

Because as much as Dean had wanted to keep the archangel away from Jack, Dean had also seen just how much his son meant to Lucifer. Which was one of the craziest things in this whole nightmare of crazy. There had been a brief period of time, the lot of them fumbling around in that camp together – Dean and Sam trying to get Mary to just leave, Lucifer trying to get Jack to see him as something more than a cardboard cutout of villainy – when Dean had wondered if maybe Jack wasn't capable of stirring something _good_ in the archangel.

Dean realized that they'd all been so apprehensive about Jack possessing any of his father's qualities, about Lucifer rousing something dark and ugly in the boy, they'd entirely missed that Lucifer, in his own warped way, possessed some of Jack's.

To serve his own self-interests and trounce his brother as much as to impress his son and prove himself the good guy, Lucifer had gone off to face Michael alone. And gotten himself captured.

So desperate to be the hero, to prove he wasn't innately evil. And about to get them all killed in the process.

Just like his son.

"A lot of people are gonna die," Dean pointed out, a weight settling in his stomach. Because Jack had already made his decision.

"I know. But – " the nephilim paused, as if considering. That pair of eyes like firebrands in the dark swept over the scene below, as if casting judgement and finding the obstacles – insurmountable by Dean's estimate – entirely wanting. As if nothing could stand against him. "I will make it up to them."

That bad feeling grew exponentially. "And just how are you gonna do that, huh?"

If there was one thing Dean knew, it was that there was no making apologies to the dead. There was no settling the score with people who sacrificed their lives for yours. Just a lifetime of make-believe memories, in which Dean lived up to everyone's expectations, said all the right things, never let affection be trampled down by frustration or dread or apathy. Never failed to say that he cared, or that he was sorry.

Dean had gotten the chance to say that to Cas, and now Mary. Couldn't count the times with Sam. In a roundabout way that did nothing to alleviate his guilt, he'd offered up the same to Bobby and Charlie, trying without success to convey to the avuncular mentor and redheaded little sister in this dimension the magnitude of their bond in that other, increasingly distant, reality. Considering the former demon had survived an angel blade to the gut, the restoration of his soul, and an entire year of bombardment by angelic armies in a dystopian nightmare, Dean didn't think it too much to ask that he survive long enough to say the same to Crowley.

"After we defeat Michael, I'm staying here." Jack replied nonchalantly. "I am going to help these people, rebuild this world."

Dean wanted to believe it. He wanted to believe that Michael and his forces would fall before the nephilim like the tops of daisies whacked down by a child's wooden sword. Wanted to believe that good intentions and pure determination could restore, however full of its own failings, a world better off without angels or demons or divine intervention.

Dean wasn't sure what Jack's promised utopia would look like. Only that it would never exist. Not through any fault of the kid's. Just because that wasn't the way the world worked, this one or any other.

What Dean was sure of was that people who sought or promised that sort of paradise often led the world in the entirely opposite direction.

Jack – with his budding arrogance, the smug confidence he had developed from easy victories allowed him by Michael, the credulousness with which he had lapped up Lucifer's guile, the sheer calm the boy was displaying now, with hundreds of lives clutched precariously in his hands – was on the verge of becoming everything Dean had ever feared the kid could be. He had the power to remake reality with a mere shrug of his shoulders, and Dean could see how carelessly Jack might shrug.

If there was a moment to pull the kid back from that, it was now.

He reached out a hand for the boy's shoulder.

The light from the church suddenly twisted, and broke the night. What had previously been mere candlelight, with shadows shuffling along the walls and occasionally winking through the shuttered boards, lost its rich, buttery warmth in favor of a steel glint. In a world largely lacking in electricity, the sudden searing radiance of what was undeniably angel grace struck like a blow and temporarily blinded Dean, despite his distance from the church.

"Now!" Jack shouted, his enthusiasm and burst of power rebounding off the explosion of grace, lighting up the ridge and the wasteland and all of humanity's hopes. He raised an arm to signal his forces, and then was off, down the slope.

"Damn it, Jack!" Dean roared, stunned and stuck to the dirt in his disorientation.

There were shouts from behind him, a rumble as hundreds of would-be warriors clamored up and over the ridge to pour down into the basin. He could hear Sam calling after the nephilim, could feel his skin fraying as the hum of the angels sharpened in pitch and intensity, a shriek of glass and sunlight centered on the small scattering of ants scuttling towards them.

Half blind, the fugue of adrenaline already smothering his panic, Dean ripped his numbed feet from the ridge and tore off after the boy. Or towards the battle. Or the church. He wasn't sure.

Around him, all was mad decimation.

The world broke apart in the night's carnage. It was too dark and then too bright and then too dark again to see anything. Someone ahead roared in battle-born ecstasy, then screamed in sudden, brief torment. There was a wet sound, lost in the night, in the hurtling thrust of battle. More shrieking, more bursts of light and agony. Muffled gasps. Something heavy collapsed just behind him. Dirt and copper mist exploded in the air. Dark, indistinct shapes flew past in a sharp flutter.

A man's body twisted in on itself. Another's burst like a tire. The earth was anointed with bowels. Dean's boot struck the ground. There was a pink squeak and then a pop. He slid, and raced on.

Dean outstripped the imperceptible forms around him. They could have been Sam, or Bobby, broken and lifeless a moment later. Harsh breathing and pounding blood filled his ears. The earth, blind to every sense except his feet, rushed underneath Dean. He was a fragment of intent hurtling onwards, towards the cracked shaft of light that was the doorframe of the church.

There was the solid, blue-black thump of body against wood – his own, as he careened into the door. Then the stinging rasp of the splintered glass and gravel against Dean's hands as he crashed into the church, the floor rising up to snap his head back. For a moment, everything was a smash of crimson and fury, consciousness warning with the delirium of pain. Slither into oblivion, or force broken knuckles to curl around an angel blade and rise his rickety, raw body.

The sound of other bodies – other souls having lived through that maelstrom of butchery, collapsing against the ground and walls – roared like deliverance around him.

Dean coughed, groaned. Cursed. Forced himself onto his knees, then lifted his head.

The interior of the church was cast in a contrast of light and shadow, the discarded pews and roughshod walls scratching out vague outlines along the peripheral, the searing scar of a rift emanating from behind the altar. Twisting and flickering, its highest reaches caressing the rafters with lace fingertips, the rift beckoned with an eerie, malevolent quality.

Lucifer lay prostrate on the altar. A tendril of grace glimmered against the ragged skin of his throat.

There was a hand on his arm, and Dean turned frantic eyes on his brother. Sam's mouth was a single line cut across his face. Behind him, Cas had landed on his knees, coat spread like crestfallen wings, a swirl of disbelief and despair on his face. Mary leaned against the doorframe, angel blade clutched against her chest, breathing hard and staring out into the slaughter beyond.

"Hey, guys," Lucifer blinked surprisingly blue eyes, his rasp barely audible over the death taking place beyond the church walls. "Kinda…late to the party." He choked on a dry hiccup of self-pitying, dispirited laughter.

Dean started towards the archangel, clenching the blade in his hand so tightly, his already battered knuckles cracked and began to bleed. He wasn't sure if he intended to release Lucifer, or end what Michael had started with a single stroke of the blade, or simply pummel the archangel until he was just another black, bloody smear, indiscernible from the countless puddles of meat now splattered across the wasteland. Any sympathy for the devil that might, possibly, have accumulated, evaporated now like mist in the heat of this bloodbath.

He was brought up short by a low-pitched whine from a crumbled form leaning against the dais. The plagued, dirty face of Kevin Tran ran with crocodile tears as the prophet heaved and sniffled.

"Gone," he blundered through the words, luminous black eyes spinning madly in his ravaged face. The bottomless pupils dilated with madness and imploration were like blackened, empty sockets. "Gone. Michael's gone. And he-he _left me_ here! He _promised_! He – "

"Michael is gone?!"

The very air in the church snapped to attention. Dust molts and human ash were pasted in place. The piercing screech of slaughter diminished to a tinny din in one great well of sudden almost-silence. Human heartbeats and pounding breaths battered against its weight.

Everything dropped out of Dean's body into his shoes – his stomach, his heart, his lingering hope that this might turn out any other way.

"Jack – " Sam's choked entreaty was laced with the same desperate resignation. His brother had spun on his heel to face the blistering figure of Jack, standing alight in the center of the clapboard church. The nephilim's furious visage seared through the back of Dean's skull to scour the inside of his eyelids.

He turned to meet Jack's eyes, two perfect halos of fire set in a once youthful face now contorted into something indescribably other.

"He _can't_ be gone. He _**can't**_!" The celestial force of that voice, with its atomic boom and wrath, slammed with the weight of the universe against the humans. Dean thought for a moment he might be smattered into individual molecules.

Cas was the only one capable of remaining upright. "Jack!" He reached out, attempting to grasp some part of the nephilim, some part of the boy he loved.

But Jack was already gone. He had stretched out a hand, towards the unmarred space above the altar. Where moments before, an interdimensional rift had spat and winked, reality warped and ruptured. A great, serrated gash opened like a maw. Time tumbled about like upended puzzle pieces: The rift opening, Jack charging towards the altar, Cas fumbling then falling, Sam and Mary and Dean shouting and scrambling after a human-shaped solar flare, the angel blade like an unearned accusation in his hand, Dean's own words from months before ringing in the set of Jack's shoulders as he leapt over Lucifer, _if it comes to killing you, I'll be the one to do it_ , all of it tumbling with the boy through the rift.

The rippling maw converged like the ocean, and was gone.

No.

No, Dean prayed, pressing his body against the concrete comfort of the altar and _willing_ the rift back open. No, no, no! He breathed in the smallest pocket of time and space, left in the wake of the nephilium's power run amok. Between two breaths, denial reigned.

Then the world recoiled, like a spring.

Shrill whistles and a pitched wailing rent the manufactured inertia within the church. From beyond the slatted walls, an aerial percussion pounded out a salvo of rocket fire and explosions. The grotesque tenor of the slaughter had shifted, no longer a primordial nightmare of wet death in the dark. Now shimmering blue flames erupted in punctuated pockets, each preceded by mechanical whine, then crowned with the crackling thunder of angelic demise.

With a whirling peal of mechanics and smoldering divinity, one of the sky-bound burning bodies streaked across the remains of the church rafters and careened beyond the mortared cell behind the altar. Blue, ethereal flames consumed the meteor's death throes.

The roof the church gave a grating shriek before erupting in a fireless blast. Nails and supports ripped free of the beams in a massive explosion of splintered wood, lifting Sam and Mary up off their feet and throwing them across the church. Dean was crushed against the altar.

He heard the whump of bodies against the ground, heard Sam groaning over the roar of the battle. Felt the tingling trickle of blood down the side of his face. He reached to wipe it away and glanced up in astonishment.

Above, in the night sky, angels fluttered and burned.

Dean lazily watched them for a moment, trying to connect their graceless, wobbling shapes with the slice of pain carving into his forehead, their sudden lack of shelter from the battle, the absence or loss of almost everyone Dean had ever loved. How did it keep coming back to this, he wanted to ask the wingless embers and shattered rafters of the church. How was it that each time they tried to put the world back together, they ended up right back where they started?

 _You know how this is gonna end_ , he'd told Sam. Except that it never seemed to actually end.

Dean forced himself to his feet.

The rift was closed. Jack was gone. What the hell were they supposed to do now?

"In case anyone's interested," came a familiar voice from the blasted doorway of the church, "we're being slaughtered out here."

Dean closed his eyes, sighed with battered, grateful frustration.

Crowley always did know how to make an entrance.

The former demon stood on the threshold, breathing hard and already half turned back out into the fray. Looking leaner, worn, resolute – in a pair of dusty boots and a faded canvas coat worthy of a Winchester. The stretch of colorless days in this alternative universe of strife and sacrificed second chances had scrubbed a distinctly human quality into the lines and shadows of Crowley's face and form. If not for the snark, Dean wasn't even sure he would have recognized him.

Crowley glanced towards Sam, crumbled against the wall, and Mary, bending over him. To Cas, who was only now looking away from where Jack had disappeared through the rift. Then Crowley looked again at Dean.

And with weary irony, he smiled.

Dean felt a small, poignant smile forming in return. Because where the hell else would two old friends meet, but in the midst of war?

Dean felt the dragging weight of fatigue's grip release his limbs. Felt the rising tide of shrill panic and helplessness in the face of almost certain, universal collapse fade away. Over the pitch and shriek of battle, Dean could almost hear Baby's engine roar, and the first chords of classic rock, grinding out a celebratory guitar solo.

Dean couldn't reopen the rift. He couldn't stop Michael from charging full-throttle into their world, or pull rash, nearly-omnipotent Jack back from the precarious edge over which the kid leaned. He couldn't resurrect the men and women who had followed him or fought for him – who had _believed_ in him – and died as a consequence.

What he could do, in this moment, was the one thing Dean was absolutely certain the Winchester family was good at.

He could kick it in the ass.

"So if you're done lying around," Crowley drawled, still with that half-smile curled at the corner of his mouth, a slight raise of his brows and a brief nod to the chaos beyond, "there's a world in need of saving."

Then he turned, battered boots scrunching in the dirt, and disappeared back into the black and red of the night.

It never ended, Dean thought, fueled by a resounding determination seeping into his very bones from the people around him. His family, rising and gathering around him in the ruins of the little church. It never ended, because they would never stop fighting. Not when it counted. Not when the world – and the lives of the people they loved – hung in the balance.

With a nod first at Sam and his mom, and then to Castiel, always by his side, Dean braced himself, and followed the former demon into battle.

* * *

Thank you for reading, and to those who left kudos or comments after the last chapter. Kudos from guests are also very much appreciated. This chapter was much belated, due to all the usual summer distractions, plus real life events, coupled with an inability to find the right words to describe Dean's reaction to Crowley's dramatic entrance.

The final chapter will hopefully be posted by the end of September, and will serve as the "season finale" for what should have been Season 13.


End file.
